Thursday, May 28, 2009

Feeling In Reverse

Here's the Greenhouse of Terror 12" that I first mentioned about a year ago (sure, like anyone remembers that), one that I originally fished out of the used bin at Rhymes Records in New Haven around '86/'87 for maybe three bucks or so. This was back when you could buy almost anything from Australia and reasonably expect that it was gonna be great, even more so if it had a certain pedigree (Citadel, Aberrant, Waterfront, etc.). In this case, the Foetus and Black Flag t-shirts on the back cover were enough of a clue that Greenhouse of Terror were worthy of a measly three dollars, or that they had a decent sense of humor at least.

All in all, this is one of my favorite records from that time, and not just for the way that I casually stumbled upon it, or for the old-school press type lettering on the back cover with that casual Aussie slant to it ("noises onto tape", yes). The two songs on the a-side make up a couple of the best back-to-back songs you'll ever find on a 12-inch: "Compulsion", which davey-lopes along in a way reminiscent of The Fall, and the spastic "Now She's Shakin'", which is about as close as any favorite song of mine is ever going to get to sounding like the fucking Hoodoo Gurus.

16 comments:

We were a west London band; only G'Dave, the guitarist, was from Australia. We all worked for Caroline Exports in Acton which was part of Branson's Virgin empire. Glad you like the record. Simon (the bass player)

The mp3 files on this post are now listen-only (non-downloadable) files. TOUGH LUCK, FUCKEN LIMEY! No, actually, for those of you who missed the boat, I will do my best to respond to any e-mailed requests for the original files.

Please feel free to give the Greenhouse away as a download. Half of us don't care and I think the other half are probably dead! I've got a shit load of the original 12"s under my bed if anyone wants one! Simon - the bass player

I knew about the band members working at Caroline Exports.My mate Terry Harmes (from Fflint, N.Wales), worked there at the same time with them. In fact the band had got the name from Terry as he had related tales of a band of the same name from N.Wales who had ceased to function in 1982.Terry sadly died in september 2008- R.I.P.

Really sorry to hear about Terry (or Legs as we called him). I shared a flat with him whilst at Caroline and he was my business partner for a while. He hit the bottle in a big way - I expect that's what finished him off.

Bet you're sorry you put this damn record up. It's like some sort of sadfuck reunion... maybe it's time for one. Should be able to find Guy hanging out a window in Notting Hill shouting obscenities at the police and James is surely not too far from the Westway. Just about to leave Cannes after Midem music conference. Phil Stoker, Tony Harris, Oliver Comberti and even Nik Pod in attendance. Terrifying. Anyway, I have a tape somewhere of the Andy Kershaw session if anyone is into further aural torment. G'Dave

Hello to the other 'anonymous' who knew Terry Harmes.Indeed he was known as 'Legs', this knickname was with him when we were in primary and Fflint high school.The actual G.O.T. name (for the earlier phantom Fflint band) was provided by Russ Taylor.I stayed a few weekends down with Legs in west hampstead and I did meet some of his work colleagues. I think there was one bloke called Howard (?) who was in a psyche-type band who had a name that was really difficult to pronounce, they appeared on some compilation album that they had there.They were certainly lost weekends down there.

Hi Tim. Howard was in a band called Mxistoplix or something similar - named after a Superman baddy I believe. I too spent many evenings coughing my guts up at Terry's! He did a mean bong! Mark and G'Dave, I'd love to hear from you. Email me at simonshaw@rock.com. I still keep in touch with Jim. Don't know where Pat is though. Simon The Greenhouse bass player

Hi, my name's Pat and I... used to be in the Greenhouse of Terror, and I'm very proud of it! I still live in London. Used to see James in Ladbroke Grove every so often, and spoke to Aussie recording tycoon G'Dave a few years back, but that's it. Wish you all well.

If Mark Baines or Pat Fanning see this (or if you know them), Greenhouse of Terror are re-forming for one night only with James, Guy, Simon and G'Dave. We'll hopefully be playing on a boat at the Albert Embankment, London, on November 1st 2014. Email simonshaw@rock.com

Some sort of announcement for 2015 or something

Even though I'm not planning on shutting this blog down just yet, updates will continue to be minimal. Obviously Blogspot has long since kicked the bucket as far as being a useful platform for anyone who's even slightly interested in having other people see the work they're doing and maybe starting a discussion over it. For now, Tumblr has become the place where I've been doing most of my posting as far as bands and photos go, so until Tumblr dies off too, you could skip on over to there if you'd like. Or you can close the browser window and go read a zine, I've heard they've been making a comeback, even though (according to the interviews I've read) Jay Hinman's is the only one that exists so far.

What about me

For the record, I have not only lost my ability to take a joke, but I can also no longer sense danger, communicate with sea animals, see through walls, transform myself into a bucket of water or block of ice, burn a batter's bat to ashes with my fastball, fly an invisible plane, nor start fires and cause seismic waves using only mind control.

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If you sent me something I must've lost it

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You can browse this blog and listen to the songs without having to download them first, by clicking on the highlighted song titles. The files will open in a new window; you can either hit "Play", or you can click on "Download" up in the right-hand corner to download them to your computer, which is the preferred method, because there's usually a cool graphic (or sometimes even lyrics) when you play the files using Windows Media Player.

Also, clicking on the photos will enlarged them. I guess some people haven't figured that out yet.

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fucking nothing, can you believe that. blogs are dead

This blog was originally intended to be a place for me to write about the records in my collection, regardless of their rarity/collectability-- or, at least, it was when I first started. Lately it's just been an excuse for me to make dumb jokes and spout off about a lot of stupid crap. Sometimes different things will be thrown in along the way just to confuse people and piss them off, which is okay. All screw-ups, wrong dates, and mis-statements will be ignored by me as if they were intentional, except for grammatical errors which will be edited and rewritten at least five or six times if necessary. Facts will often be misrepresented, as a way of mocking those people who think such things are important. Please note: This is just a hobby for me, and bands are written about here either because I own one of their records or because I've seen them play before and like them. Posting press releases for crappy bands that I have no use for is not really how I want to spend my spare time. If you want to know what kind of bands I like, just look at the sidebar to see which bands I've written about already, and you'll notice that your PR firm doesn't represent any of them. Most of the live band photos on this blog are mine, and if there's one of your band that you like then please feel free to use it, I don't care. It's your band anyway. The blog title itself was swiped from Paul Caporino-- "One Base on an Overthrow" was originally going to be the title of a M.O.T.O. record that I was going to release back in the '90s, but that never actually happened. Lucky for you, I guess.